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Knicks Morning News (2025.06.19)
06/19/2025 11:00:01
06/19/2025 11:00:03
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06/19/2025 09:39:34
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193 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.06.19)”
Thanks pepper for posting the strickland article in yesterday’s thread. As I am in the JohnLocke camp (run it back with a new coach plus tinker with the bench) and the article is supportive of this, I disagree with one of the major premises–that Leon has turned the FO into an analytical powerhouse (to quote: “On the front office side of things, he turned a standard operation with strong scouts into an analytics juggernaut made up of multiple coaching analytics staffers and data product engineers, as well as a data scientist and separate player and film analytics staffers.”) and thus all the moves they look at are “following the numbers”. If that were the case there wouldn’t be this overarching bias against using draft picks to actually draft people. I am not saying that bias is stupid, but you do that in large part because you don’t trust your analytical output.
“If that were the case there wouldn’t be this overarching bias against using draft picks to actually draft people. I am not saying that bias is stupid, but you do that in large part because you don’t trust your analytical output.”
These decisions have not been made in a vacuum. Brock Aller has factored the cap considerations of draft slots into the team-building calculus.
I continue to believe, for example, that the “incineration” was a cap-based decision. Has the Knicks simply drafted Deuce McBride at #19 and Quentin Grimes at #21, there would have been far less controversy about that draft because no one would have been able to prove that those two players would have been available at those slots, and winding up with two rotation players at those original spots should always be considered a win. (This is separate from the question of who the Knicks should have actually picked at #19 and #21).
But the Knicks can hardly be credited with maximizing draft capital. While they have been extremely clever in staying under the second apron while acquiring two arguably max-level players and two highly valued wings, there is no question that they bled away opportunities to acquire and appropriately utilize players on rookie contracts. Everyone at the management level, from Thibs to Leon, has had a hand in that shortcoming.
But the most egregious blunder of all will continue to be the Mikal Bridges trade, partly because of the overpay, but more importantly for emptying the draft asset chest before the team could truly be called a finished product, even with the unexpectedly low cost of acquiring KAT. Having even one of those unprotected picks in the hopper would have made a huge difference.
So while I am optimistic by nature, I just don’t see much of a championship future with this roster and asset chest. I don’t see another coach changing that, beyond exposing flaws in the roster that Thibs glossed over. The good news is that by then, the 2033 pick will free up, and we’ll have more information on whether any of the rookies are keepers. The bad news is that the second apron will make extending Mikal while keeping everyone else happy and improving the bench a dicey proposition.
“I don’t see another coach changing that, beyond exposing flaws in the roster that Thibs glossed over.”
We very well may be in agreement on this, other than our starting points are different. Do I think with a new coach and the same roster we win during this window? Highly unlikely. But run it back so we have more information.
I want a new coach with a new system that highlights–or more accurately pinpoints–how we can improve the roster. And then we act on it, however painful or controversial that may be. This sequence seems more logical and should produce a better outcome than trying to simultaneously change the roster and implement a new system. And that is also why I am in favour of a proven retread versus an up and coming assistant since we don’t have the luxury of taking the risk that the assistant is not up to the task or needs some time to get acclimated to HC duties including gaining the respect of the locker room.
How tall is Trey Lyles and how many rebounds did he average? Just curious
Hollinger: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6433149/2025/06/19/nba-free-agency-2025-jonathan-kuminga-josh-giddey/
The guys he lists as candidates for the taxpayer exception or vets minimum, who don’t have a team option or some other reason why they’re probably not signable:
Jake LaRavia
Dalano Banton
Taurean Prince
Talen Horton-Tucker
Amir Coffey
Jae’Sean Tate
Javonte Green
Torrey Craig
Kevin Knox(!)
Doug McDermott
Kessler Edwards
Cam Reddish(!)
Chuma Okeke(!)
dunno how tall lyles is he may be undersized but he only shoots about 34 percent from 3 and probably only around 8 rebs per 36
probably only laravia and banton are interesting at all sf is not what we need we need a 4 more n likely peferably 1 who plays a lil defense
What a load of bollocks.
Leon is clearly spending a lot of Dolan dollars on PR this summer.
There are certainly things you can give Leon credit for but “winning the margins” is not one of them. We bleed value in almost every transaction. There are too many L’s in the margins to count, but I’ll try:
the Obi pick, the Obi trade, the 33rd pick punt, the 19th pick punt, wasting a pick on Rokas, the cam trade, the Fournier contract, the Rose contract, the Kemba contract, the Noel contract, trading a lottery pick for a poor return, the player-friendly Hartenstein contract, OG’s exorbitant extension, Mikal’s exorbitant price tag, trading out of the 24th pick, drafting Dadiet over Filipowski to save a marginal amount of money, punting on the 38th pick.
The Margins vs Leon is like watching the Thunder when they go on one of their runs, and the shill who let this be published in his name should be ashamed.
This is why a discusison of what Leon thought at the time is critical to evaluating whether it made sense to overpay for Bridges.
IMO, I-Hart, Randle, OG, Bridges, Brunson, J-Hart, DDV, Deuce and Mitch IS a finished product with Kolek, Dadiet, Huk and McCullar as longer term development players. There was also the potential to trade any number of those guys to upgrade a position or make a change if required.
If he thought I-Hart might get a deal above what NY could pay, but was told I-Hart would stay if it was even close that allows you to go all in on what you think is the final piece.
If he knew OKC was going to blow the Knicks offer out of the water and make it impossible for I-Hart to stay, it made no sense to empty the tank when you need a replacement C. It makes so little sense, I’m willing to think he was fairly sure I-Hart was coming back because he was told by his agent he was coming back. No one expected a huge overpay for I-Hart to blow up the plan.
After that, it’s a debate about whether Towns was the right piece. He’s cleary an upgrade over Randle, but that left us without a rim protecting C behind Brunson (with Mitch out) and a lack of depth because DDV had to be included. He also could have punted the first half of the season trying to find a different star and just used Simms or some other cheap C for awhile until a better fit was available.
Virtually everything we have been debating all season is because I-Hart left for nothing.
BernieErnie, while I’m sort or resigned to thinking that Leon will take this approach, and will root hard for it to work, I am not a fan of it. I’m pretty entrenched in the camp that doesn’t believe in the Brunson-KAT pairing.
There were reports that players were frustrated with KAT on the defensive end, and I don’t think that had much to do with Thibs’ coaching. Another coach might mitigate some of his issues by utilizing different coverages more often (or at all) than Thibs did, but my guess is that good coaches will adjust to whatever is tried over a 7-game series. I don’t think that any tweaks to free up KAT on offense will overcome this. I just don’t see him being able to physically keep up with the multiple fast-paced actions executed by the most skilled, athletic, and well-coached teams.
He’s not Enes Kanter, but he’s not Jokic either. He and Brunson on the floor is a simple riddle to solve at the championship level.
I am reminded of the scene in the movie Titanic where the architect, Thomas Andrews exclaims “Not five!” to mean that the ship could stay afloat with four aft compartments flooded, but not five, and that it was a “mathematical certainty” that Titanic would sink.
In this case, Leon should exclaim “Not two!” While it is not a mathematical certainty by any means, there is an extreme likelihood that one of the four teams the Knicks will face on a championship run will figure out how to sink us.
I think the time to cash in on KAT is now. Find a GM dumb enough to believe that KAT is the missing piece of their puzzle, and paper-clip the shit out of him to build something with a higher ceiling in the next 2 years.
“If he knew OKC was going to blow the Knicks offer out of the water and make it impossible for I-Hart to stay, it made no sense to empty the tank when you need a replacement C. It makes so little sense, I’m willing to think he was fairly sure I-Hart was coming back because he was told by his agent he was coming back. No one expected a huge overpay for I-Hart to blow up the plan.”
It was pretty damn obvious to everyone that there was a strong possibility of getting outbid for iHart, being that Leon could only offer 4/$72M. If Leon based his entire stratey on assuming that iHart would be retained, he’s a moron and should have been fired immediately. But I truly doubt that he was that stupid.
A much more likely scenario is that he kind of knew he had KAT in the bag, and felt that a) KAT was wayyyy better than iHart as a starting C and b) Mitch would be back sooner than he ultimately was, i.e. that losing iHart would not be a big deal. He might have also thought that acquiring Mikal’s defense would in some way make up for losing iHart’s defense. This was also faulty calculus, but not objectively stupid.
Even the KAT trade we lost in the margins, as we traded that Detroit pick when it was valued as a second that was unlikely to convert and turned into the 17th pick in a loaded draft.
The margins are undefeated against Leon Rose.
I also think Leon has to reckon with the Mitch dilemma. I strongly feel that Mitch is analytics-based fool’s gold. He’s obviously an incredible bargain on his expiring deal, but between his strong-ish showing in the playoffs vs. limitations and health concerns, this might be the perfect time to sell high on him.
To me this suggests the team generated tons of *in season* data, likely showing how Thibs might coach “better” by following the numbers — diff lineups, etc.
If so, the Knicks are prolly looking for a coach who wants to use that kind of useful data posted often here (but not be me).
i do not know that any coach wants to be you even tho you seem like a nice guy
“Win the margins” looks like this:
You give up 5 firsts for Mikal Bridges, but the picks are
– NY ‘24 1st
– MIL ‘25 1st
– NY ‘26 1st
– NY ‘28 1st
– either the WAS or DET pick
Instead Brooklyn dominated the margins. They didn’t just get five first round picks for Mikal. They took Leon’s five most valuable picks, leaving him with two ‘24 picks he didn’t want to use and tying his hands for two years when he desperately needs the freedom to trade picks.
Leon has literally sacrificed the margins on purpose to bring in the top-heavy Friends and Family.
I mean, I get that human beings and their lives are more than just cold, objective rationality — but that purports to be cold, objective rationality and it’s one of the dumbest things imaginable. It would be better if the pretense of rationalism was simply dispensed with ex ante and the fandom and all the projection that entails freely admitted. No apologies are owed for it.
+1, couldn’t agree more. Textbook example of the “efficiency” obsession and the fact that everything he can do has an easily visualized data piece appended to it — the “rebound,” the “blocked shot” — while everything he can’t do — basketball skills — doesn’t.
They absolutely should sell him.
Chiming in to say the Strickland article was a really great piece of process analysis.
Hubs, a lot of your errors were only errors in hindsight and were moves at the time that people largely were ok with.
Prime example was bringing back Noel and Rose after the we here season. They were resigned on reasonable contracts that were pretty short contracts too. Yes both were “older” but no one could foresee that Noel would promptly get injured and miss the entire next season and that Derrick rose would immediately turn into a pumpkin. Same with the Kemba deal. It wasn’t some huge long contract. He was signed as a stop gap and people were largely ecstatic about it. Again I don’t think anyone quite realized how washed he was.
… useful data posted here (but not *by me).
😉
You keep missing the most important part.
We here had a good line on what I-Hart was worth from Marks and others.
We knew there was interest from OKC and they might offer more.
I-Hart himself strongly hinted in an interview around mid season that if the difference was smaller he would have stayed. Leon had to know that from his agent.
So to think he was leaving, it wasn’t enough to know that OKC or someone else might offer more. You had to know they would blow us out of the water by so much that he had no choice but to take the bag even though he loved NY and wanted to stay.
That was very far from certain. No one I know anywhere suggested that OKC wanted him so badly they would blow the Knicks offer out of the water with a huge overpay. He significatly overpaid.
Just pointing out that the analytics analytic doesn’t say anything whatsoever about experts and data on college and the draft…
Just sayin. Maybe something they should look into.
There were many threads here in which we rationalized all the reasons Hartenstein was going to stay.
His girlfriend is a model and wants to be in New York!
OKC has Chet, they don’t need a center!
If the front office was acted like a bunch of deluded fanboys like all of us were on here, that does not seem like a great sign.
Hubert was predicting iHart was going to get outbid for months and he was right. I imagine the Knicks were disappointed but also not shocked when it happened. I mean they made him their best possible offer and he said I’m going to try free agency
and now he is likely to win an nba championship so there is that
i will be over there in about an hour and a half
One of Leon’s category value-adds as an agent barely removed from the business should be being able to glean the marketplace for free agents, including his own. If he can’t even manage that, then ….
E, who are the good and valuable players on this team?
Follow up question: which players are most responsible for the Knicks making it to the ECF?
Your analysis here makes it seem like you believe almost every player on the team is bad or suboptimal, and that the coach was also bad. How did we make it as far as we did?
Easily answerable: Brunson and Towns both had all-NBA seasons and are all-NBA caliber players in terms of underlying skillsets.
It’s no great surprise that teams with two of those guys will make an ECF, particularly with the injuries the Pistons and Celtics had.
That said, they only pythag’d 51 wins and SRS’d ninth. If you don’t have PTSD, that’s really not all that impressive when you have two all-NBA guys. When you’ve dumped almost the entire asset chest to do it, it’s even worse.
What most people are doing here in the aftermath is blaming the two all-NBA guys for the failures of their supporting cast. At its extreme, some are even saying one or both should be moved to better bring out the talents of the OG Anunobys (*) and the Mikal Bridgeses (**) of the world. That’s of course completely backwards. Those guys serve BrAT, not vice versa.
(*) Oh, he can’t guard 4s and they need a new power forward who can? Who knew?!?!?!?!
(**) Oh, he can’t really guard the ball or the point of attack? Who knew!?!?!?
nnaji is only 20 years old was playing in europe at 15 all luka like and he is every inch a center and no relation to zeke of the nuggies
Ok here’s another question.
Brunson and KAT are universally regarded as terrible defensive players. The Knicks played these guys a lot of minutes, yet were an average NBA defensive team. This despite, in your opinion, OG and Mikal also not being good defenders.
I mean, SOMEBODY had to be playing some defense somewhere, right? To what and who do you attribute the Knicks league average defensive rating?
we can pick up jock landale clone lachlan olbrich from australia in the draft
That’s not my opinion. OG’s a good defender, though not as good as his fanboy reputation. He just can’t “guard 1 through 5” as the fanboys insisted. (*) Mikal’s ok.
My overall opinion of OG’s is that he’s a very good role player. Near the top of his bucket. But people overrate that bucket as against the higher-up bucket(s) of the skilled players. That misapprehension of the relative impacts of the buckets is where the analysis starts going awry. That’s not even OG-specific, though he’s kind of an archetype of his bucket.
I disagree that Brunson and Towns are “terrible” defenders. Towns played on the top defense in the association last year. Brunson played on the top playoff defense in the association in 2023, and was saddled with two other allegedly “terrible” defenders in RJ Barrett and Obi Toppin. In fact, the 2023 playoff team violated Strat’s famous “rule of 2s” in virtually every way.
So there’s misapprehension about some things, and a lot of question begging going on. I’d suggest a re-evaluation of priors.
(*) And he’s not fantastic in rotations and processing. But he’s very, very good in his limited box against defined offensive guys.
Doogie, above and beyond the sociopathic stuff you’ve started posting, why in gods green earth would anyone want a Jock Landale clone?
“i will be over there in about an hour and a half’
Just stop that shit.
a trade involving james nnaji when he was 13 years old how is that even possible:
June 21, 2018: Traded by the Detroit Pistons (as a future 2023 2nd round draft pick) with a 2021 2nd round draft pick (Jeremiah Robinson-Earl was later selected) to the Philadelphia 76ers for Khyri Thomas.
You’re hearing this more and more
After watching closely JerSims game you start realising that Elite Athleticism aint the first thing that matters in Centers.
I like Nnaji’s footwork/positioning on this video below. He may be useful.
https://youtu.be/gNdokjkPW8E?si=rHfyBTCQUbPg52nK
E back to his old self. Only the axe being ground has changed.
We made 4 draft picks last year.
It’s not unusual or strange to trade draft picks for win now moves.
It never makes sense to spend 5 picks on a guy worth 1.
You insisted that the pick was a 2nd rounder. Other people didn’t.
who do we think are the three current knicks who play the best defense i will say mitch deuce og in that order any other ideas
Yeah it’s those three, plus maybe Delon
Not that he was coming here, but now he’s really not coming here. But I’m sure his agent is happy with Leon today.
Vecenie’s scouting report in 2023 was basically that Nnaji had an elite combo of size/athleticism but was insanely raw.
He mentions Mitch, Whiteside, Gafford, and Capela as raw players who were able to become good starters. He also says that Nnaji was even rawer than those guys.
I’m not sure he’s the guy we need right now, but there could be something very good in Nnaji.
Leon is getting coaches paid this offseason
Feel like this is lowkey why he did this in the first place. Leon’s not an idiot, especially with $ and people. He knows teams aren’t going to just hand over good coaches, but he also knows that giving coaches a bargaining chip will get you in their good graces.
“Feel like this is lowkey why he did this in the first place. Leon’s not an idiot, especially with $ and people. He knows teams aren’t going to just hand over good coaches, but he also knows that giving coaches a bargaining chip will get you in their good graces.”
ess-dog, have continued to scratch my head as to why he is doing this since everyone will say no, either because they want to keep their coach, or they want to get rid of him and now can get an asset, and in the process he looks directionless. Your answer has stopped the scratching…at least for now!
Dolan’s most likely behind the attempted big-footing of other teams’ coaches.
I hear Dolan is also responsible for some of those tariffs. Also the latest ‘razor throat’ covid variety.
Sorry, should have caveated with “mostly likely.”
the last several years it’s been hit and miss on actually reading all the different books I’ve ordered…
recently picked up a copy of the Handmaid’s Tale after watching a couple of episodes of the show…something about the whole concept of the work though turned me off and i never even got started on the book…
saw another title I recognized from going over top sci-fi lists recently which looks like AppleTV is making it in to a show…
just started but it seems like the Murderbot Diaries are a heck of a fun story…
Even if you’re right (and I don’t think you are) it egregiously false to call them wins in hindsight.
Also egregiously false is this flat out lie:
Julius Randle was a latent all nba forward who single handedly increased his value tenfold.
And far from a smudge he inherited the most cap space in the NBA by a massive margin. They had under $45M used of a $109M in cap space.
The whole article is factually inaccurate. It is ghostwritten PR. If you can’t see that you flunk media literacy.
Was watching some clips of KAT playing defense that DJ Zullo posted, and yeah, he sucks on D.
Mitch can do many different things on defense. He’s a complete defender.
“Was watching some clips of KAT playing defense that DJ Zullo posted, and yeah, he sucks on D.”
But wait, he was part of the best defense in the NBA last year!!!
(E also thinks that if someone takes a dump in a solid gold toilet, the dump becomes worth its weight in gold.)
I think some of you still don’t get what likely happened with I-Hart.
The difference between what the Knicks offered and what OKC offered is HUGE.
They offered him 14.5 million more guaranteed money over 3 years and then when he’s a free agent again, he can add to that significantly in the 4th year. He’s a young improving player. That could easily be another 30 million or more in the 4th year. He might wind up making 45-50+ million more.
So ask yourself this.
If all they had to do was beat the Knicks offer, why did they totally blow us out of the water and significantly overpay relative to what salary experts were saying he was worth?
Are they crazy? I don’t think so.
IMO the answer to that is fairly obvious.
It’s because I-Hart was going to stay in NY even if OKC offered more money. He wanted to play in NY. Leon almost certainly knew that and his agent certainly told OKC that.
I-Hart himself strongly suggested that mid season in an interview.
But what happened is that OKC viewed him as a kind of final piece to the puzzle and said “Screw it, just pay him whatever it’s going to take to get him here”.
Everyone knew that OKC was interested. It was widely reported.
Everyone knew that OKC could and would offer more. It was widely reported.
NO ONE said they would be willing to overpay him by a huge amount to get him out of NY when his preference was NY and he was willing to stay for less.
I don’t, for a minute, think Leon thought he’d be able to retain Hartenstein. We all knew he was gone. The money difference was always going to be too much, especially after the playoff run.
I’m in the camp of Leon trading for Bridges with the idea that Mitch would be back earlier, but when they received word he’d be back later, Thibs convinced him that they couldn’t live without a center, so they traded for KAT. (Plus, they were skeptical of Randle meshing with this squad).
And now, he’s stuck. And the only real move for him is with a new coach with a different philosophy, one that fits or can adapt to the team he squished together (instead of the pre-KAT-trade one that was finely-tuned for Thibs’ philosophies).
OKC is paying iHart almost $30m a year to play 28 minutes a game.
That’s Jrue Holiday/Khris Middleton/Porzingis money.
When has Leon extracted an extra anything? He has been the extractee in literally every transaction.
Moreover this is common knowledge. When you see something like that in an article that is not just false but the opposite of what’s always happened, your antenna should go up immediately.
Like when we were the highest offer on the market for Isaiah Hartenstein?
This one is just galling. We passed on at least 5 guys who could help us more than Dadiet. This MF really calls it a win that we don’t have Jaylen Wells or Kyle Filipowski bc they wouldn’t have signed for less than 100%?
This article is an insult to its readers’ intelligence.
I enjoy it when Hubert’s ire matches the smell test…
I can’t even get through it bc every paragraph is more galling than the next!!!
Look at this one:
🤯🤯🤯🤯
I feel like I’m reading an article about all the great things Donald Trump has done for the Mexican communities in Los Angeles.
And then he calls this a win:
Oh yeah, that worked out great. Thanks, Leon. 🤦🏻♂️
Leon should have walked away from the Bridges negotiations with at an absolute bare minimum floor Whitehead, and most likely someone like Claxton. Cam Johnson is probably a stretch, but certainly Leon should have asked.
He just never negotiates hard on behalf of his team. There’s always some weird angle, be it whether the guy is in-network or the silly “hoarding” (*) of draft picks for a “superstar.” That Strickland article, yeah — abject embarrassment.
In terms of the other thing, there’s no logical sense in which Isaiah Hartenstein’s presence on this team makes Mikal Bridges worth five ones. This is another in the now long line of attributing magical mystical fairy dust properties to him and OG. “Mikal is the perfect fit with _____.” “OG does winning things.” Yadda, yadda.
Neither of them do those things. They’re just regular basketball players, just like all the regular basketball players in the association that like those other regular basketball players can fairly be judged by what they personally can do on the basketball court. Mikal’s in particular at this point just a generic 3&D wing who if anything is harder, not easier, to fit into what a team is trying to do — as we saw in stark terms this season. (For pretty simple reasons: If you’re a 3&D wing who doesn’t 3 very well and doesn’t D very well, you’re going to be a tough “fit.”)
(*) Sarcastic scare quotes because he didn’t really in fact hoard them, instead giving a bunch of them away — e.g., the Incineration.
If you think the Knicks when healthy last year were a legitimate title contender than signing Hartenstein was an obvious win. He was a big part of that. Even if you don’t he pretty objectively outplayed his contract
You don’t trade a lottery pick (Jalen Williams) to clear a few million dollars to facilitate signing a guy in free agency and then not buy his Bird rights.
Clear, unequivocal loss and in no sense can it be sanely be played as a savvy “win at the margins.”
He got taken to the cleaners in that trade and the guy who took him to the cleaners now has the player Leon machinated and prestidigitated to get. Brutal.
That is genuinely funny.
The Hartenstein deal was structured in a way that made Hartenstein impossible to resign if he performed well above expectations, which he then went ahead and did.
It was structured in a way that was almost guaranteed to fail. Hartenstein now possibly winning a ring on OKC in a series that was turned around by a dominant performance by Jalen Williams… not any real good way to describe that other than with a word I haven’t thought about in a while: Knicksy
The original iHart negotiation is another one in which Leon was counsel to the deal, not counsel to the Knicks — and so the Knicks wound up with a materially worse outcome than if they’d had someone negotiating on their behalf and only their behalf.
Same thing with OG.
He’s hopelessly conflicted. Any normal company (or the government) wouldn’t even let him negotiate transactions with CAA on the other side. (And that doesn’t even get into whether he favors CAA players, which he obviously does.)
well done hubie…you have now forced me to consider whether i care if it was in fact a “puff” piece potentially orchestrated by the front office…
okay, i’m pretty sure i don’t care – cuz it just feels so good to have a little sunshine blown up your ass every once in a while…
good and seemingly accurate breakdown of the article though…
you know, i’ve kind of even forgot what was in the article now by Prez from The Strickland…
it’s funny, it’s like people don’t really remember so well what you may have said or did (at least that’s mostly true when i’m not here anyway) – they do remember real well though how you make them feel…
Not to say it was a brilliant move, and to criticize the draft draft moves that facilitated it (if you did so at the time, credit to Hubert) is fair, but I don’t recall a single poster suggesting at the time that the two-year deal was going to backfire because someone was going to be willing to pay him $30M AAV in free agency and we could only go as high as 4/$72M, especially because when it happened, Mitch was still viewed by most here as the guy we couldn’t afford to lose for nothing. The same folks who thought Leon was brilliant for getting him to agree to a 4-year descending deal.
I also think one has to wonder whether what Leon actually would have paid iHart had he been able to re-sign him, given the second apron restrictions.
Let’s be Real
Hartenstein wasn’t the reason we missed the championship this season
It never crossed my mind that we didn’t have Early Bird rights to Hartenstein when we signed him, I just assumed that was part of the deal. If you’re making an upside play like that, you should be able to build in some insurance that will allow you to, you know, enjoy the upside.
Hindsight is 20/20, but it’s pretty annoying to have the “wow this guy turned out to be TOO good” problem blow up in your face.
It’s so fucking funny to read posters ream Leon for not giving IHart a third year on his deal when after we signed him and he started out playing poorly for us a lot of those same posters were saying he was a bad signing.
Honestly, he may have been the reason.
Hartenstein is a beast in drop coverage and was a VERY effective player in his last season with the Knicks. Resign Hartenstein and a whole bunch of positive butterfly effect stuff likely happens.
IHart is also not the reason OKC is probably winning a title. He’s a luxury for them and will probably be one of the guys they try to trade when they inevitably start having cap issues.
Reality Reminder
Leon Rose got a Shit Team and make it a Contender in just a few years wo being helped by Draft Luck or by Superstar preferences.
Missing some *dimes* during his bull ride ain’t the reason to call him mediocre..
Especially by the Monday morning coach pov
hi KYN, hope your 3 pointers are hitting only net, and the kitten audience is all well 🙂
we’re up around 38 celsius, which is a little hot, thankfully though the haze is whiteish in nature and not too much of the brown stuff…
was speaking with an older someone yesterday whom has lived in the area their whole life – they said the air was a lot better today than it was in the 70’s when they were growing up…
i appreciated the perspective…most stuff is just perspective, supported by some data or another…
ran in to a couple of folks yesterday while getting my vehicle serviced, they seemed so happy in their seemingly relatively stress free work environment…
been two years now since i’ve worked, i had some fun at work, laughed and stuff, also remember being frustrated and pissed a lot, both with work devices and with people…
i still get a bit tense now when i have to go out in public or interact with a bunch of folks, or deal with new devices…
whoa, just checked, looks like you are dealing with some high heat there too KYN…
stay cool brother…
KYN,
Some people just prefer to be negative. Can’t appreciate what we have and how far we’ve come.
when i first read that article last night, my initial reaction while reading was much what hubert outlined, i.e., what is stated as fact around the administrations goal/doctrine…did not really happen in reality…and given that seems very clear…and assuming the writer is not on the msg payroll…it seemed odd to be taking that position as to how astute they were in running things to get to a goal…however, the broader point being made if you don’t fixate on the plethora of inaccuracies around executing the doctrine…is that the guy they hired to take them to the end goal..ended up not behaving in what they believed was the organizations best interests and thus he had to go…and most agree (except “coaching doesn’t matter” folks) and hence the correct decision was made… I didn’t go back and read it…but it did fall short (I think) in assigning some blame to leon and co..so that is a bit fishy/incongruent with reality…
at the end of the day…in pro sports…roster building has imo…2 goals:
1. achieve a regular season record to get into postseason and hopefully have home court for as many rounds as possible (the article would seem to suggest leon and co believed this to be true and while thibs for the most part achieved, it was not done according to plan/optimally) which impacted the 2nd goal of
2. having enough diversity in the roster that you can mix and match on both sides of the ball ….depending on the matchup in each round (thibs kind of did something in det, got a wounded animal in boston and got through it and ended up throwing the kitchen sink out there against indy but still clinging to the crappy 5 guys alignment that a chat GPT coach would have not thrown out there)…this was the nail in the coffin…again, the front office likley believed they had the components to adjust as needed
so, i guess my point is…you can ruminate on the misrepresentations in that article but forest through the trees…it was time for a change and it was made….it does make me think (if this was spoon fed to the guy) that the front office also needs to take a longer look in the mirror…if they believe their own press.
When all kinds of Basketball Pros don’t have a clue about a guy named Michael becoming the GOAT let’s Not pretend that You could easily predict that ihart was the missing piece of a Knicks Upcoming Dynasty…
holy cow – the yankees won a game…finally…
bringing back jobu to hopefully help keep giancarlo healthy the rest of the way…
We did have early bird rights, we didn’t have the full bird rights
Hartenstein is really fucking good.
That pick was Ousmane Dieng and that’s not why we made the deal.
#hi KYN, hope your 3 pointers are hitting only net, and the kitten audience is all well 🙂#
Hi geo! My 3ps have been replaced by indoor gym bike/treadmill and elliptic lately but I’ll be back at the courts for a 3p shoot around when i feel the knicks roster motivating!
Thankfully the orphan stray kittens were brought up to the surface (from the underground garage) and were blended with the rest of the cats so I’m very pleased about that!
Hope you’re doing fine man! Stay air-conditioned!
He wasn’t so fkn good when we signed him, otherwise he wouldn’t be with us for a “piece of bread”
It remains the reason they did the deal, and OKC picked back-to-back so it doesn’t matter which pick they used when, but all of that is just a sideshow to the actual basketball point — which is that Leon should have drafted Jalen Williams (*) rather than doing what he did instead of drafting Jalen Williams.
(*) Assuming he knew who he was, anyway.
They cleared room for Jalen Brunson and received multiple 1sts for doing so.
But you’d make a great hindsight GM.
I’m pretty happy with Jalen Brunson.
They cleared room for Isaiah Hartenstein, too. By definition.
Leon pissed those other firsts away on his “superstars.” He should have drafted Jalen Williams. If he knew what he was doing, he would have walked away with both JB and J-Dub, and if he *really* knew what he was doing, he would have walked away with all three of JB, J-Dub, and iHart. With full Bird Rights on the latter.
But he doesn’t really know the league, doesn’t decide things on basketball terms, doesn’t really know how to maneuver things, is conflicted, and so he didn’t. His Friends and Family network has some good players and coaches in it and so it’s improved the team by quite a bit, but that’s now hit its natural wall. They’d have been far better off just playing it straight with a normal basketball guy. But that’s not Dolan’s thing (and never will be.)
Getting two year of great production at a cut rate was obviously a win (albeit a very short lived one) but the article clearly suggests Leon is a master of extracting more, and specifically cited “adding a team option when you have leverage as an example.”
The point is to trash the article, not the Hartenstein contract. If Leon were constantly winning the margins and maximizing value in every transaction, Hartenstein would still be here.
The whole article is about how Leon turned paper clips into houses while Thibs is out here turning houses into paper clips. It’s a preposterous thesis.
At the time of the trade, they had cleared zero dollars. The Hartenstein money came later.
Sorry we also got *checks E’s notes from all of several hours ago*:
“Towns had an all-NBA season and is an all-NBA caliber player in terms of underlying skillset.”
Huh.
E’s old reliable “Why don’t we just get all the good players for nothing and know ahead of time who is going to be good?”
Good GMs don’t clear a few million in cap space by attaching lottery picks. They do it in less costly ways.
Leon got a farm and turned it into a ***** Hotel
Crying about the cows is touching but he Upped the value anyway
It was less costly because we didn’t just attach a lottery pick to a salary. That’s the point.
Exactly the opposite. You pay more if you’re attaching a salary. They didn’t attach a salary and still used a lottery pick. The Thunder qua Thunder didn’t take on a dime of salary and still got the lottery pick.
Kemba’s salary was really part and parcel of the whole thing, so they did attach a salary if you want to be charitable, but his salary was tiny. The Celtics attached a 16 to get out of his original deal, but that still had like $150M still on it, with an AAV of (if memory serves) around $35. Leon was getting out of a tiny buyout deal.
It was a massive value sap. Trying to spin it as “winning the margins” is preposterous. Objective people aren’t fooled.
You’re the one who said they moved a lottery pick to clear salary. Here it is if it’s a struggle to remember your position from 17 minutes ago:
Objective people don’t mind when someone points out that they’re ignoring a huge part of the trade to make their take look better.
That’s exactly what they did.
If they attached a lottery pick and didn’t clear salary, that’s worse than attaching a lottery pick to clear salary.
I don’t know what this debate is and I don’t care to engage but the fact that I-Hart did not want to sign a three year deal was something I can remember we discussed, ie that he was confident in himself enough to want to be a free agent after two years.
I would rather have IHart and room than KAT but that ship has long sailed so not worth cavilling about.
Currently the debate is whether E can remember what he said 20 minutes ago
Yeah, but intentionally or not, you guys were spinning it, or at the very least avoiding the real debate — which is why Leon would have squandered a lottery pick to help provide cap space for a guy he didn’t even buy the upside of.
This is dumb. The article that started this debate was about why Thibs got fired, not how Leon isn’t perfect.
GM moves are like gambling.
According to their knowledge the risk is lower or higher but never without Luck playing a big part in their success.
Winning every move like say Danny Ainge does don’t mean shit if building a Champion ain’t the overall Goal.
Sometimes sacrifices get the plan done.
A spinless take would post the actual trade or trades and salary cap ramifications instead of conclusory statements, which is what I called you out on.
This makes no sense at all. If iHart wants to maximize the size of his next contract, the smartest thing he can do is make it so NYK can match any offer which increases the likelihood of a bidding war for his services…
They cleared Kemba Walker’s salary of under $10 million through a series of moves that included starting the night with a lottery pick and ending the night without one.
The lottery pick they traded away could have been used to draft Jalen Williams, but instead he wound up on the team that acquired the lottery pick and that same team now also has Isaiah Hartenstein, who was acquired by the Knicks with another free agent, using the cap space cleared by trading the lottery pick together with additional cap room cleared in actions later in the period between the draft and free agency.
Again, if people want to celebrate that as an example of “winning the margins” and Tom Thibodeau having to go because he didn’t do enough with the roster built via a bunch of “winning the margins” moves by Leon Rose over the last five years, that’s their right.
And E once again fails at even a pretense of objectivity
They didn’t clear any cap space in the 11th pick trade. You should know since you’ve spent the last two years acting like you’re the only one who knows the details of the multiple deals made that day.
Yeah, I’m bending over backwards trying to be fair in saying they cleared cap space with the trade. In reality, they did only very indirectly and OKC didn’t take on a dime of salary to get the Jalen Williams pick from Leon. Detroit, in a deal entirely removed from Presti, did. And they walked away with Jalen Duren.
As was entirely predictable, and predicted here within 48 hours of draft night, Presti took Leon to the cleaners.
But I don’t want to overstate it entirely. They did walk out of draft night with an additional 9-ish million in cap space (and some down the road fugazis, which Leon didn’t use to draft and probably never intended to). Still nowhere near the cost paid.
No, I just correct people lying about the trades
You can be against the trade, but if you are, don’t invent a deal that didn’t happen.
To show even further how lame Leon’s calculus was, he cleared more than double the cap space than he cleared with the J-Dub pick by trading Burks and Noel, also to Detroit, where he attached basically bupkis.
2022-23 salaries:
Kemba: $9.1
Noel: $9.24
Burks: $10
Winning the margins!!!
who is burks
Leon didn’t trade the 11th pick to clear cap space, not for Isaiah Hartenstein (as E keeps suggesting), and not for Jalen Brunson (as EB suggested).
Leon traded the 11th pick in ‘22 for the same reason he traded the 33rd pick in ‘20, the 19th pick in ‘21, the 24th pick in ‘24, and the 38th pick in ‘24: he sucks at the draft.
Even though this is the shortest Knicks off season in 25 years I get the feeling it’s going to feel like the longest.
I agree that’s probably the reason, but that’s not “objective” and so I’m being charitable and “fair” by joining his intent with the fact of the cleared cap space.
He cleared double the cap space in the Burks/Noel deal than in the draft night debacle.
Leon doesn’t know the league and doesn’t have any experience in personnel, and has a boss that supports the idea of not drafting so, yeah, looking very much like he doesn’t draft because it’s too much work and he knows his limitations.
You aren’t serious about getting to know the league’s personnel and learning how to actually evaluate talent if you hire William Wesley as your number two.
The other time he had a lottery pick, not only did he draft CAA — he made it clear in the draft run-up that he was willing to give up significant assets to draft CAA. He’s hopelessly conflicted.
Like you, in the comment below that was about the 11th pick?
Ironic you seem to have forgotten what you said 20 mins ago.
Might as well add in all the picks he recklessly sent to the Nets.
Where did you manage to come up with the idea that the guy who ran the basketball division at CAA doesn’t know who is in the NBA?
I know who’s in the NBA. You don’t have to be an agent to know that.
He has no experience in discerning the relative quality of basketball players and making plans and decisions around those criteria. And I’m not talking about “Jalen Brunson is better than Jalen Wilson,” which everyone knows.
E has GALLOPPED off his meds…
not cool to talk about someone elses medications if indeed he has a problem that he needs help with then it would not be his fault
Some first principles:
You could do the NBA draft as a GM with no staff and having done no scouting, but just scouring mock drafts on the internet. If you’re creative, you could hire someone to put together a simple computer program to get the consensus of mocks at each pick in the draft.
So, e.g., if you have the 18th pick, you pick the consensus mock guy at 18.
Let’s call that replacement level GMing.
Leon has extracted far less value from the draft than replacement.
An agent would probably understand why you couldn’t make that trade and get another guy making over 20 million dollars back. Maybe you should find one and ask him
Watching the Yankees during their 6 game losing streak was more fun than reading this blog has been since the Knicks season ended.
Truth or Troll?
If you’re not able to draft every year a player who’s going to be in the All Rookie Team what’s the reason to be called Draft Expert or Great GM?
A smart GM knows how to include other players in the deal to make it work. A really dumb one says “We don’t have 20 million in free cap space, so I’m gonna just settle for Mikal.”
Dariq Whitehead is on a rookie deal.
cristopher sanchez dealing tonite even tho its against the marlins
i wrote that so someone would finally score on him and it worked like a charm
Leon’s been dumping the airwaves with relentlessly self-serving BS. That prompts discussion.
or not
We’re talking about a post on a knicks blog that got 5 comments.
and then was subsequently and successfully squirreled away
Not for nothing, Presti had a salary floor to get to and signed Hartenstein to a descending deal, so he had his cake and ate it too.
Go Pacers.
now we can all watch the aforementioned isaiah hartenstein and jalen williams win their championship rings tonight yay
The Indiana crowd is as loud as any that I have ever heard at MSG. That is my highest praise.
OKC looks ready for this one
To settle this:
“In 2022, Leon Rose traded out of #11 for three future conditional firsts, jumped back in with one of those and four seconds for Jalen Duren, then dealt Duren along with Kemba Walker for the Bucks pick recently sent to Brooklyn in the first of two salary dumps that led to the signings of Jalen Brunson and Isaiah Hartenstein.”
Also, I believe there was a lot of talk back then about not wanting to pay a lottery pick salary as another way to save money for JB and iHart, but the past is the past.
Indy now ready to play also.
TJ steal, Obi second three. Crazy stuff
ihart with 4/2/1/1 in the first six minutes gag
22-5 runs are nice, would prefer to lock up a game 7 before my dinner reservation.
Thunder need to pick up the offense
Might wanna go Uber eats donnie…
Nice little flurry from OKC, Obi with two huge misses at the rim
Daigneault didn’t rest SGA too much …
Jalen is fun player to watch. Beautiful baseline move.
That’s been one of the remarkably dim witted themes of the Leon administration.
While the rest of the league sees the enormous value of rookie contracts, Leon — and only Leon among 30 GMs — looks at rookie salaries like albatrosses that need to be avoided. So he trades out of drafts, or trades the opportunity to select a good player for a much lesser player who costs less.
Atlanta got Jalen Johnson.
OKC got Jalen Williams.
Utah got Kyle Filipowski.
Memphis got Jaylen Wells.
But Leon avoided having to pay them. And then he has the that’s “winning on the margins”, according to him and his PR team.
It appears that the Indianapolis Hyena is at the game in all her screeching glory.
I have a friend who put a big bet on Siakam for MVP and kind of worried TJ might snake the award
TJ McConnell finals MVP is going to happen
indiana needs to figure out how to survive these non TJ minutes…
Kolek should watch a lot of TJ McConell film.
48-25 since the 10-2 start
The Pacers need to get through this last 2 minutes before the half and go into the locker room up big. Can’t let OKC back into it.
OKC 1-11 from 3, Indy 9-24
Holmgren’s been awful.
What a close to the half!!!!
All the Thunder players who aren’t Jalen and Shai look really bad on offense surprisingly often.
Is it just me or does Halliburton only look injured when the Pacers are losing?
“All the Thunder players who aren’t Jalen and Shai look really bad on offense surprisingly often.”
I’ve been saying that all along.
When the Pacers are taking care of the ball, they are better than OKC. OKC’s defense has to generate TOs or their offense is only OK. It’s not nearly as good as the rank. It’s kind of like our dependency on OREBs last year. With them it’s extra possessions with TOs.
It is definitely not just you, D-Mar.
What a pathetic performance by Chet. Elimination game and you come out like that? He’s lucky Jalen has established himself as the number two option.
I don’t see a reason to keep him in there but bad coaching has been a big part of these playoffs. The “he’ll figure it out” tactic has gone to shit and proven wrong again and again
Here’s a consensus mock draft from 2022. Congrats, the replacement GM drafted the now retired AJ Griffin.
Here’s one from 2021 that has the Knicks draft Trey Murphy at 19, which would be great if he weren’t already drafted in the real world. The highest undrafted player in that list I believe is Kai Jones who was most recently on a two-way deal.
They have Jared Butler at 21 and Josh Christopher at 32. Christopher was on a 2-way this year but played in zero NBA games. Jared Butler looks like an alright player to me but has been waived multiple times.
They also drafted 58th. Sandro M. is listed but was drafted 54th. I don’t think anyone will care if I skip trying to figure out who we would’ve drafted 58th.
Consensus 2021 Mock we get Patrick Williams. Killian Hayes was the most frequently mocked to us.
IQ is drafted too late and the other site doesn’t list a draft that far back.
So the replacement GM gets us two players still on real NBA deals in Patrick Williams and Jared Butler, plus whoever we draft instead of IQ.
I would, but the food always comes colder than Holmgren
The Thunder still have plenty of moves to make, but I don’t see a dynasty in the making with this team.
Tyrese Halliburton, Desmond Bane, and Jalen Johnson were the highest ranked players available for Leon’s first three first round picks. Then my boy Keon Johnson was the bpa for the 4th.
Drafting Jalen Williams was not something an idiot using the ESPN auto draft feature for could have done, but drafting Halliburton, Bane, and Johnson was.
I literally linked the consensus mock drafts…
Their only problem is going to be paying everyone.
If they get cheap and break up the team like last time, they still have enough drafting power to rebuild a couple of more times to remain relevant with slightly different cores each time. But they still have a couple of more runs with this team before they have to make harder decisions and half of this game and game 7 to win a title right now.
I almost never have opinions on the draft. IMO it’s mostly a crap shoot within tiers of talent. However I was heavily into Haliburton and Bridges. I’ll just point out, if we did draft Haliburton, we wouldn’t have Brunson now. Everything would be different.
Daigneault not catching enough heat for going to game 7 with a team that won 18 more games than it’s opponent
also why does Hali do that corny pretend no look pass spin move? We saw you looking when you made the pass it’s fine
Pacers are lucky OKC is so cold or this would be a game again. Then again, if the Pacers hit a few shots it would be over.
Consensus mocks aren’t player rankings. If everyone knows the Pistons are stupid and want to take Darko, the mock drafts will list Darko #2. That doesn’t mean Darko is the consensus 2nd best player.
The baseline is an idiot who knew nothing about basketball and simply took the highest ranked player available. That idiot would have drafted Halliburton, Bane, and Johnson, which likely would have led to a better team than the one Leon put together.
I’m literally just following E’s instructions on deciding a replacement GM move. Take it up with him.
If this half continues like this the final score will be 76-42
OK, after reading the back and forth I took it up with myself and that was a flaw in the idea I sketched. Needs to be player rankings rather than mock drafts. There have to be them in basketball; there are like three or four in hockey.
This game 6 for OKC is more embarrassing than our game 6 …. My goodness
This is a flogging. Shocked.
Why couldn’t I have just made a bet on fanduel like a normal person?
(The answer is I hate gambling apps, but still.)
Hubert, that’s a great question. It sounds like it has something to do with IRS vig
There are plenty, but they don’t all agree, so which consensus are you using? Idk what Hubert is using for example
OKC getting badly outshot from 3 and 1 bucket off the bench lmao
Some type of consensus of scouting services reports.
Other proper tweak to methodology: If you pick 19, you don’t pick the 19th player in the scouting service rankings, you pick the highest-ranked player actually still on the board.
Leon lost the margins badly with the Obi trade.
The Thunder will likely win game 7, but a lot of their flaws have been exposed by the Nuggets and Pacers so I don’t think we’re looking at a 90’s Bulls or mid 2010’s Warriors dynasty in the making here.
Who was going to give us something more than 2 2nds for one year of Obi Toppin? He’s a fine rotation player
This is a weird ass NBA Finals.
Concur on OKC. Not skilled enough for dynasty worries. A third all-around star or near-star puts them at that level.
Ultimate import: Changes the purgatorial equation which is based on relative standing. Really no chance of the Knicks being in purgatory right now, not that they would have acted accordingly anyway.
OKC’s vaunted defense getting absolutely shredded by TJ McConnell.
Indiana’s SRS is terrible
TJ McConnell, finals MVP. What’s weird about that?
SGA has 8 turnovers and 2 assists, Jalen Brunson would never
On the flip side, Chet has only played 112 NBA games and probably has another level or two coming. And they can make any trade they want. This is probably the worst they’ll ever be.
Pacers should expect a call about interviewing Carlisle, shortly
Btw Euro big James Nnaji, who we own the draft rights to, is apparently leaving his club and coming to the states next year. He’s 7 ft with a 9’4” reach and like 1% body fat.
Finally: It’s FurphyTime™️
Whoa is Toppin really the Pacers’ high scorer? Too bad he actually sucks so much…
If OKC loses this series, it could lead to a big swing on a trade. They have the assets and cap flexibility to go get anyone.
Obi scored most of his points on 3s, which is ridiculous. Imagine coaching Obi Toppin and you have him camped out beyond the 3 point line
If you were hiding the Finals logos and telling me that this game is from Preseason I’d believe it
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